Coming Soon	Sound Clips. Where this icon appears next to a piece, click on it to hear a short sound clip of that piece. Clips are MP3 format, and can be heard in many players, including Microsoft Media Player. If you don't have it, get it free here.
Flamenco dancer Cory Carile joins the wonderful Hamilton Children's Choir in Überlebensgross, directed by Zimfira Poloz.
New Revoicings	"All For Me Grog", currently available for SATB and SAB, will be released for TTBB. "Son de Camaguey", currently available for SATB, will be released for SSAA and TTBB. Information and soundfiles for these pieces can be found on the Composition Pages of this website.
Bring It Home (SA – some simple divisi – and piano) Amabile	"Bring It Home" was commissioned by Melanie Michael as a 25th anniversary present to her husband Andre, and to daughters Melinda and Aleisha, who both sang in the Amabile Youth Singers of London, Ontario. "Bring It Home" retells the story that Melanie told me: having daughters in the choir brought to their home an awareness and an appreciation of music that wouldn't have happened otherwise. My piece, sung from the child's point of view, also paid tribute to Andre's Caribbean side with a steel pan solo played by Aleisha. The soundfile is from the Amabile Youth Singers' 25th Anniversary Concert, and though the tempo is a touch slow, it did facilitate clean diction in a wet acoustic - something that needs to be taken into consideration with this piece. The steel pan solo can be played on marimba, or keyboard, or even left out as the piano part can still carry the piece. For them what gots it though, the steel pan sure does sound right. And it's amazing how good steel pan sounds on some electric keyboards…or a steel pan/marimba mix… top
Change My Name (SSA and piano) Recording Available Nove Voce	For Robin Norman and the Nove Voce Choral Society of Prince George, British Columbia: a choir that did such a good job with my "dreamy meltdown" pieces that when they commissioned me I knew I wanted to give them another slow, hypnotic spell to cast. "Change My Name" is a series of melodic variations on the opening line of a spiritual more usually known as "If He Changed My Name". The piano and vocal lines intertwine, drift, float and moan in a landscape of emotional suspension, suspension, release. Against this dreamy vocal presence the words are bare and simple and honest about the emotional cost of a spiritual search. top
Using gesture to help animate a phrase with the Halifax Girls' Honour Choir. Tim Callahan-Cross took many fine candids during my travels through Nova Scotia, and you will see several more of his shots elsewhere on this website.
Down Low With Finesse SSA divisi, a cappella Finesse	The title refers to handling a mood swing with style, but also pays tribute to the choir’s name: Finesse is a girls’ chamber ensemble from Mt. Whitney H.S. in Visalia, California, directed by Brad Hayashi. My text deals with the anxieties of young adulthood that are exorcised, chant-style, in a cyclone swirl of ostinati, funky riffs and “chacka chacka” vocal effects that turn the choir into a beat box or an air guitar. I’ve often said that I think of a choir as a tribe, in Down Low With Finesse the tribal experience of putting the piece together becomes the best therapy for overcoming despair, described in this piece as “that down-low creepin’ song”. The accompanying soundfile was made during a classroom rehearsal with Finesse – a wonderful workshop with a very hip, intelligent ensemble with a lot of personality. top
Dr. Joseph Ohrt and Central Bucks High School West achieve lift-off with 'Poltergeist on a Stick', an unpublished piece of tribal intensity for choir and a battery of percussion and noisemakers.
En El Principio SATB divisi, percussion and string bass	Commissioned in California by the Bakersfield High School Chorale and their director Christopher Borges, the bilingual text (English and Spanish) was written in collaboration with choir accompanist Alicia Ellsworth. En el principio somos diferentes – diferentes nombres, diferentes caras, historias, razas. “In the beginning we were all different – different names, faces, stories, races.” The choir becomes the image of e pluribus unum, and the yin/yang themes of unity within diversity and diversity within unity are musically underscored by the use of counterpoint, interconnected ostinati, and the trading of vocal lines between the sections. Percussion and string bass help create the Latin beat, and although the piece can be performed without the bass, it is much richer and harmonically more grounded with it. While workshopping the piece with the choir we found that different tempi created interesting variations in mood and groove. The accompanying soundfile has the crackling energy of the premiere, but we also liked the suave feel when the tempo was a little slower. top
A Living Child (SSATBB, a cappella) Innismara	Commissioned by the Hot Earth Ensemble (great name!) for Muses & Minstrels: A Festival of Early Performing Arts (A Cupids 400 Marquis Event). The clue to it all is in that final phrase a festival for the 400th anniversary of the 1610 founding of Cupids in Newfoundland. This was Britain’s first attempt at a colony in the "New World", and the place where the first British "North American" was born. It was a different time then, when savage quotation marks lurked everywhere, ready to surround you and choke the life out of you. My text follows the true story: how, led by John Guy, the settlers were spoiled by an unusually mild first winter that left them unprepared for the howler that followed, how they couldn't grow enough grain to keep their animals alive, how they couldn't hold on to their colony, but how they did see the symbolic birth of that first child. Since the piece was for a Festival of Early Performing Arts, I began it with a pes between two low voices, a fine old tradition. Vocal lines modeled on the old fiddle tune "Wee Weaver" turn into the texture of a madrigal and then weave back. The soundfile is from the premiere, sung by Innismara and recorded by the CBC. top
Vincit Qui Se Vincit SSATB, piano and percussion	Vincit qui se vincit, or “He conquers who conquers himself” is the motto of the Kingswood-Oxford School, for whose 2009 centennial this piece was written in the key of C: C for “conquer ; C for “centennial”; C for its musical sense of “it all starts here”. The school follows the classical Latin pronunciation of soft “v” (like the English “w”) and hard “c” (like the English “k”). In setting the motto to music I have followed the later choral tradition of hard “v” as in “victor” and the soft “c” of “city”. Music director Marcos Carreras combined his middle and senior choirs in the SSATB texture, but overall this is for high-school and above. The groove is Pan-Hispanic, the vocal parts full of antiphony and counterpoint, and the text gives room for discussion as well as the kind of uplift required in an anthem that celebrates learning and enterprise. This anthem is perfect for the public occasion where a ceremonial dignity can be combined with a sense of dance. The percussion part calls for four instruments – congas, shaker, cowbell and cabasa – but it is possible to perform the piece with fewer players. Notes are included for percussion options, as well as the option for the audience to sing their own riff at measure 107. The pianist gets to both accompany and solo. top
A photo session with the stars of Ann & Séamus: Andrew Dale, Kathleen Allan, and on the far right Alison Nicholas. Photos by Chris Nicholas.